Chapter 13

Stars and Scars

"Well, then, um . . . when could we get together?" Harry stammered a little over this question. He desperately wanted her to answer that he could come over right now. He did not want to go back to the house. True, he felt a little better now that he had spoken to her and she seemed to still want to see him, but he just really wanted to be with her today.

"I have to go somewhere in a few minutes" she said. Harry thought she sounded a little disappointed again, so he held his breath, hoping that she would finish that thought the way it sounded like she might. "But I suppose you could come if you wanted to. It'll probably be kind of boring, but we could, uh, talk." Harry thought that this sounded wonderful. He really did not care what they did, as long as he was doing it with her. "I've got to take my little brother to his swimming class."

"Oh. Would that actually involve swimming?" Harry wasn't very keen on swimming. He could usually keep his head above water, but only just. Of course, there was the time two years ago that he had swum underwater for over an hour, fighting off mer people and grindelows. But he had help that time with gillyweed and he did not think he could manage to produce any of that on short notice. And, anyway, that experience had done nothing to make him enjoy being in the water. Quite the opposite, actually.

"No, I just have to stay there and wait for him to finish . . . Do you think--"

Harry jumped right in. "I think that sounds brilliant. I think it will take me about 25 minutes to get to your house. Will that be okay?"

"Yeah, that's perfect, actually. We need to leave in about 40."

"Great. I'll be there." Harry hung the phone up, and leaned back against the warm glass of the phone booth door. He felt a bubble of happiness rising slowly from his stomach to his throat and then he did not want to hold it in - "Yeah!" He pumped his arm above his head. He felt like he had just caught the Golden Snitch and won the Quidditch house cup. He stepped out of the booth, automatically checking that his hair was covering his forehead, and headed down the street.

He arrived at the white house on the quiet block where Cassie lived 28 minutes later. He was breathing sort of hard, but not because of the rather brisk walk he had just had. He had walked by the place where that witch had been standing three days before and Harry's heart had started racing. He was hoping that no one who could potentially recognize him was staring out of unseen windows. He had clenched his hand against the urge to grab his wand and walked up the street, looking straight ahead. When he reached his destination, he paused, and she came out onto the porch to meet him as he climbed the steps. The brilliance of her smile made him remember why, despite the danger, he just couldn't stay away from her.

"Hi." They both said it together, and then both looked down at their feet, and Harry felt the warmth of a blush spread over his neck. "Come on in," Cassie said, and held out her hand to him like she felt he would need a little extra support. He took her hand gratefully and felt the gentle pressure of her fingers on his as she pulled him through the door. Her mother was slim, pretty, and looked nothing like Cassie. Her hair and eyes were dark rather than the sunshine and sky of Cassie's coloring. But she was friendly, welcoming Harry with a warm smile and only one or two questions that he was able to answer easily.



The little brother, John was his name, came running out a minute later and grabbed Cassie's hand, "Come on, Pia. Let's go, let's go!" Cassie laughed and allowed herself to be steered out the door again, grabbing a bag that was sitting by the door. Harry followed, laughing himself at the excitement the little boy demonstrated, practically dragging his sister down the stairs.

They talked quietly about nothing as they walked down the street to the public swimming pool where, Harry was told, John had taken lessons now for two weeks and today was his next-to-last lesson. "My mum will be bringing him tomorrow, but she had something else to do today." It was not until they had seen the little boy into the pool with his classmates and Cassie had thrown a blanket out onto the grass under a tree about 30 feet away from the pool, that Harry asked her the question that had rolled around in his brain since they had left her house. She was arranging herself on the blanket with a book and a water bottle. The shorts she was wearing showed off her long legs, and Harry tried not to stare at them as she kicked off her sandals, crossed her feet, and patted the blanket next to her, indicating that he should go ahead and sit down. "Why does he call you Pia?" He had thought the first time that he had just misheard the boy, but by the fourth time John had called to her to hurry, deciding apparently that talking to Harry was making her slow, he had decided that there had been no mistake.

"Both my brothers do, actually. When Matthew was little, he's the older one, well, when he was little, he couldn't say my name and that's what he could manage, so . . ." She turned to check on the kids in the pool but Harry thought she was hoping he would drop the question. It embarrassed her for some reason. He persevered.

"So, he couldn't say Cassie . . . and said Pia instead?" He looked steadily at the back of her head, trying really hard to resist the temptation to reach out and move the strands of hair that were blowing across her face in the light breeze.

"It's . . Oh, all right. Fine. I guess you would have found out sooner or later, anyway. My name is, well, it's Cassiopeia, you know, the constellation. I shortened it to Cassie to go to school. I mean, honestly, what sort of a person names their child after stars? My mum was a bit of a free spirit in her day, I think. Obviously, she got her act together by the time the boys came along. They've got regular boring names. " From the ring of frustration in her tone, Harry realized that this was a delicate subject with her.

"Ah. Cassiopeia. So, they just caught the end of your name, Pia. Actually, I like it for a name. I know quite a few people named after stars and things." He stopped, deciding that explaining about his godfather might open up subjects that were better not discussed. "In astronomy class, Cassiopeia was always one of my favorite constellations to look for, she is easy to chart and easy to see." Harry looked up at the bright blue of the afternoon sky, remembering fondly the many midnight hours spent in the astronomy tower, carefully charting the movements of the planets, stars, and constellations. "I guess if they wanted to name you after a constellation, they could have done worse, how about, um, well, Orion? Or Equuleus? " He snorted a brief laugh, trying to imagine what other horrible names that her parents could have stuck her with. He noticed that Cassie was staring at him with a look of mingled surprise and puzzlement on her face.

"You take astronomy at school? That seems kind of like a weird subject." Harry caught his breath momentarily. He had said more than he probably should have, but it was hardly fatal - not like saying Potions or something. He could handle this.

"It's an elective, you know. I think one of the teachers just has a thing and started it kind of like a club and then . . . well. Now it's a class." He hoped she would not ask more about it. Luck was definitely on his side. John came running over at that moment to where they were sitting and announced some terribly important piece of news about another boy in the class, and then ran back on little feet to rejoin the boy in the water.

They left the topic of school completely after the interruption and drifted into chatting about other things. "On the phone, Harry, you sounded like if you had actually had to get into the water, you wouldn't have agreed to come. Don't you know how to swim?" Cassie had abandoned all pretense now of reading her book, and was just laying there on her stomach on the blanket kicking her feet behind her as they talked. Harry sat next to her, feeling relaxed and sleepy in the warmth of the afternoon. She seemed genuinely interested in everything he said and he found himself saying things to her that he had never admitted out loud to any other person.

"My aunt never had lessons for me. I think she hoped that if I were ever in deep water, I would drown." He was surprised at how little bitterness he now felt toward the Dursleys. Dudley had had lessons for years and that had always rankled Harry but now he realized it didn't matter.

Cassie laughed at what she thought was his joke, but Harry said "Seriously, Cassie. I'm not just joking."

"Why did she hate you so much?" There was a genuine question in her voice, and Harry decided he would be as honest as he could with her.

"She hated my mother, hated my father. Now why she hated them, I'm not really sure. I have my ideas, but they don't seem to be enough to have caused the absolute hatred she had for the two of them." He paused. Petunia could barely bring herself to say her own sister's name. And Harry could not remember a single time in his life that the name James had actually crossed her lips. He shook his head. "Anyway, when she was stuck with me, I think she hated me twice as much as she had hated them. And, believe me, that's a lot of hate." He leaned back against the tree trunk and closed his eyes. He was too tired of hating, too tired of being hated, to drag up much emotion about the Dursleys today, he decided, feeling the lack of sleep the night before make itself known at the edges of his consciousness. He could easily fall asleep right here.

He felt a sharp sting on his hand and dragged his eyes open to look down and see a bug on his right hand, obviously mid-bite. He reached down to squash it, but Cassie's hand got there first, brushing it off with a quick movement. She got up on her knees and leaned over him, looking closely at his hand, pulling it out into the sunlight to look for a mark. "Did it get you?" At Harry's quick nod, she rubbed the spot with her thumb. Then, her eyes narrowed as she stared at the back of his hand. She tilted her head, first one way and then the other, shifting his hand a little. Then her eyes met his and he realized suddenly what she had just noticed and he wanted to pull his hand back. He swallowed instead. "What made this scar, Harry? It's a lot newer than the other one." He swallowed again, forcing back the bile that had risen in the back of his throat at the reminder of what had caused those thin lines on the back of his hand. Her thumb was rubbing carefully now over the back of his entire hand from knuckles to wrist, soothing, perhaps, the brief reminder of past pain. "Does it hurt all the time, too, like that one?" Her eyes glanced up at his forehead.

"No. It doesn't hurt. It was just an accident at school, Cassie, nothing to worry about. Nothing at all."